


yellow fever

by woojinisms



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, introspective, lapslock, maybe guanlin/jinyoung can be interpreted here, seonho was mentioned because you know i had to do it to 'em, this is super soft i only rated it t bc of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 22:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14924283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woojinisms/pseuds/woojinisms
Summary: yellow (adj.): of the colour between green and orange in the spectrum, a primary subtractive colour complementary to blue; coloured like ripe lemons or park jihoon.





	yellow fever

**Author's Note:**

> there's a first time for everything, right?

the weird thing about being friends with jihoon for most of woojin’s life, is that at some point, woojin forgets what it’s like to not have his dumb blonde head around him all the time.

and he supposes, that maybe it would have happened anyways. fallen into place like the pieces of a puzzle, or something stupidly cliche like that. that even if he hadn’t stopped little five year old jihoon from eating a yellow dandelion in the playground, things would have played out the same way. that’s the thing about being friends with jihoon for most of his life.

it goes a little something like this:

 

 

two days into finals preparation, jihoon tries to drag woojin out of his dorm. he blows through like a storm, or maybe a loud five year old kid banging on an iron-cast pan with a pair of metal chopsticks. (looking back, he supposes it’s kind of funny. where did he get a pan like that? it’s not like jihoon cooks or anything; he just leeches off of woojin’s waning savings whenever woojin decides that he’s hungry.) woojin is at his desk, sleeping peacefully with his neck angled at an uncomfortable position. his intention had been to study, but like most good study sessions, he had veered into napping.

 

“hey asshat!” jihoon had yelled, coming in through the door with his stupidly loud culinary drum set. he circled around the pile of clothes on the floor and wrinkled his nose at the protein bar wrappers on the floor. “gross. when’s the last time you’ve gotten out of your chair? look at all this... shit on the ground.”

 

woojin lifted his head up from his spot at his desk, sleep creasing his cheek and marks of pen ink on his right hand.

 

“hnnng.”

 

jihoon placed himself gingerly on the edge of his bunk, setting his pan and chopsticks on the pile of blankets. “park woojin, it is 2:47 in the afternoon, and i refuse to believe that you haven’t eaten any food at all today.”

 

woojin let out a low groan from his seat. “shut up. this is stupid.”

 

jihoon gasped loudly. (unnecessarily dramatically, if you asked woojin.) “as your best friend of who knows how many years, i re-fucking-fuse to let you treat your own dancey body like this. how are you supposed to move and groove if you’re hungry?” he paused. “also, i haven’t had lunch either.” jihoon shot up from his place on the mattress. “let’s go to that new babjib down the street!” the chopsticks fell to the ground with a clatter, the pan soon following with a louder sound.

 

“in case you didn’t notice, i’m kind of trying to study here.”

 

“in case _you_ didn’t notice, you’re kind of being a party poop here,” jihoon huffed. “fine. leave little old me to eat by myself, all alone, in a restaurant, because my very own best friend decided to ditch me for some musty books.”

 

woojin groaned again, and closed his textbook. “at least let me take a shower first.”

 

———

 

jihoon ended up getting his way, (as usual), albeit not without struggle (as usual). woojin, however, insisted that he had to bring his study material so he could cram whatever remaining material he needed to know, absolutely ineffectively, into his already tired brain.

 

(“gross. why are you such a nerd.”

 

“excuse me, mr. park; some of us need to work hard to do well in our courses, and if i don’t pass this exam, i don’t get my credit. we’re not all born with a freakish ability to digest things. both academically and cometestibly.”

 

“i’m almost sure that’s not a word, but whatever butters your biscuits, pal. but if you’re just gonna study, let’s go to my building. i have stuff to pick up too.”)

 

he had been herded out of his dorm under the façade of “getting food”, but it was only after an unnecessarily long detour to jihoon’s room and an awkward conversation with his roommate, donghan, had they found a nice booth next to a large window, and sat themselves in it. jihoon had gone up to the counter to order food, which left woojin at their table, pen in hand, notes and textbooks sprawled across the table. he didn’t come back until 20 minutes later, woojin’s favourite tteokbokki, a big bowl of gaeranjim, ramen, and a small plate of bungeoppang in hand. they ate in comfortable silence for about half an hour, jihoon quickly devouring his ramen and half of woojin’s tteokbokki. he had stained his yellow hoodie in the process, drops of tteokbokki sauce on his sleeve.

 

“you don’t want some?” he had asked, mouth half full of rice cake.

 

“i’m okay,” woojin replied, not looking up from his notes.

 

(he might not have said that it made him happier to have seen jihoon eating well, but he supposes that some things are better left unsaid or whatever.)

 

and being around jihoon comes so naturally that it’s an hour before either of them utter a word. woojin supposes that that’s the thing about the two of them; easy comfort that needs nor wants anything more than just the two of them. and it wasn’t until all the food was cleared, jihoon and woojin both preoccupied with their studies, (or instagram. same thing.) when suddenly, jihoon lifted his head, wide eyes blinking at the distance.

 

“what.”

 

he didn’t respond, twirling a pen in his left hand. woojin looked up, spoon in his mouth.

 

“what if, hypothetically, we got married,” jihoon contemplated, still staring somewhere past woojin’s head. “would i take your last name, or would you take mine?”

 

woojin stared at him for a beat before standing up and knocking him upside the head.

 

“what the fuck was that for?” jihoon whined, dropping his pen to rub the side of his head.

 

“we have the same fucking last name, you headass.”

 

jihoon just stared back. “and?”

 

woojin sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “we have the same last name, so why would it matter?”

 

“okay, but if you think about it, it’s more symbolic than it is literal! if you take my last name, then that means i’m wearing the big boy pants in our hypothetical marriage,” jihoon huffed, crossing his arms in defiance.

 

“that’s toxic masculinity,” woojin said, pointing his spoon at jihoon.

 

“sure, but i still wanna wear the big boy pants,” jihoon complained, cheek now resting on their table, doe eyes still blinking at woojin. his sweater clad arms lay relaxed at his sides, swinging back and forth just slightly. yellow’s a good colour on him, woojin thought. pretty, like jihoon. he set his spoon on the table and snorted.  

“fine. you can have your big boy pants.”

 

(that's another thing; another hallmark of their relationship: back and forth discussion of things that "could be", under the apparition that they could never be. 

 

 

and it’s not until they’re both long gone from the babjib that jihoon sends him a text. “thanks for coming with me,” it reads.)

 

———

 

it takes about a week for woojin to gather the balls to talk about it, the movie in front of them still playing and jihoon drooling on his lap. he’s wearing the same yellow hoodie, tteokbokkki stain washed off after woojin had nagged him about it.

 

daehwi had paused the movie, set the remote down, and turned towards woojin. “okay hyung, spill the beans,” he angry whispered, hand gesturing towards jihoon.

 

woojin looked up, hand in jihoon’s hair. “what beans. i had jiggae for dinner.”

 

guanlin snorted from his spot on the ground. “what the fuck, hyung? no; he meant about jihoon-hyung.”

 

jinyoung had whacked him on the arm from next to him. “shut up,” he hissed. “what if he wakes up?” he sat up a little straighter and turned around to look up at woojin. “but yeah, he’s got a point. have you said anything to jihoon-hyung yet?”

 

woojin groaned, removing his hand from its place in jihoon’s hair. “is it that obvious?”

 

guanlin grinned, reaching over to steal the bowl of chips out of jinyoung’s lap. “everyone and their aunt knows, hyung. even seonho knows, and he doesn’t even go here.”

 

daehwi scoffed from the couch, dropping the remote next to him. “what you seem to forget is that he’s been in love with hyung since the two of them were 10 years old, and i was the one who had to suffer through it.” he grabbed a few chips from the bowl, which was now in guanlin’s possession. he nodded his head in the general direction of jihoon’s sleeping figure. “hyung, do us a favour and _please_ just ask him out. he’s just as in love with you, you do know that, right?”

 

jinyoung leaned over guanlin’s shoulder to steal more chips just as guanlin grabbed his cap off his head. “just confess! what’s so hard about it?”

 

but woojin knows that there’s nothing hard about it, nothing at all. because it’s jihoon, because it’s woojin; because it’s jihoon and woojin. it might not be hard, because the two of them are the easiest thing that woojin knows, but it’s fact that it’s terrifying that really gets him. because jihoon’s yellows are everything familiar that woojin knows, they’re also the most fearsome thing he’s encountered. more than demons  or monsters – but maybe less frightening than being without him. woojin wouldn't know.

 

(they never did finish the movie, but it didn’t matter because it’s not like it was any good in the first place. instead, he pushed down the fluttering feeling in his stomach when jihoon woke up, and decided to brush his hair back into place and tell him that it was time to go home.)

 

———

 

maybe he did end up confessing to him, on a calm summer’s evening, after exams were finished. he’s not a romantic; far from it even. and though the entire idea of telling his best friend that he loved him while the two of them lounged on the grass next to the han river was a _little_ cliche, maybe woojin didn’t mind.

 

(perhaps the fried chicken grease on their fingertips and their wind tangled hair made it a little less than cliche.)

 

maybe that was the weird thing about being friends with jihoon for most of his life. perhaps woojin could feel there was something different there, that day.

it might have had something to do with the silence and the calm of being the only two people in the area, only the voice of traffic interrupting them. woojin’s heart beat hard in his chest, goosebumps rising on his skin. it was chilly, but he had never felt so warm, so content.

 

 

 

(it was under this blanket of temporary peace that he decided to say something.

 

“maybe i’m in love,” woojin had whispered, under his breath. jihoon’s head was in his lap again, this time without the drool. he carded his hand through his newly dyed brown hair, his words getting lost in the sound of wind and city lights.

 

jihoon shifted in his lap and looked up at him. he smiled softly, the corners of eyes crinkling. “me too.”

 

“wh-what did you say?”

 

“me too.”)

 

and he supposes, that maybe the hard part of confessing wasn’t that it was hard to confess. maybe the hard part was woojin knowing, in some part of his heart, that confessing to jihoon wouldn’t change the way the two of them were. and maybe that was scarier than any colour out there; even yellow.

 

——-

 

and maybe woojin isn’t poetic. he’s not well versed in each fleck of amber you can find when you stare into jihoon’s eyes, or the way his cupid’s bow moves when he smiles. maybe he has no way with words, and can’t describe the shades of sunrise that jihoon is, or that his gaze holds every single star, every single sun, every single galaxy in its depth. and because he’s not poetic, the only thing he can say is that he’s really in fucking love with park jihoon, and every single streak of yellow that he’s painted on his life.

 

because that’s the weird thing about being friends with jihoon for most of his life. at some point, the lines between “best friend” and “something else” blur into something that woojin’s not familiar with.

 

and he supposes, that maybe it’s a little scary or whatever, but the truth is that being with jihoon is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, or something stupidly cliche like that.

 

and maybe jihoon’s a little really in fucking love with him too.

 

(his mom had always told him that he looked better in white than black. “it’s cleaner, and it suits you well.”

 

but maybe woojin’s colour has always been yellow.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to mandy, for giving me the confidence to post this work, and to mires, even though you may never read this. i've never written a fic before, but i hope this one is okay. perhaps i'm no longer as invested in wanna one now, but this was stewing in my head for a little too long, so it had to come out somehow, however constipatedly. (and maybe 2park will always have a place in my heart somewhere, even when i'm old and grey)
> 
> EDIT: thank you for 50 kudos! it means the world to me <3  
>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/parkwjh_)


End file.
